Never Quite a Fairy Tale
by slightlysmall
Summary: The first time he hears her sing, she leaves him so breathless she doesn't say a word to him for eleven years.


**A/N: Written for Sylvia for the Gift-Giving Extravaganza. My first attempt at (a) Hunger Games FanFiction; and (b) present tense. I'm not Suzanne Collins and don't make money from this.**

(The first time he hears her sing, she leaves him so breathless he doesn't say a word to her for eleven years.)

He is sitting in class when the girl with pigtail braids stands up to sing. Her facial expression is almost indifferent, like she she places no value in her voice, like she thinks everyone can sing like that. He looks outside as the song ends, and just beyond the window are trees full of Mockingjays - all gone quiet at her voice.

He feels like a Mockingjay, then, but he's envious when they start to sing back.

He can't work up the courage to speak to her, and the more time passes from the very first time he noticed her, the more awkward it becomes. When her father dies, he wants to console her in some way, to put a hand on her shoulder and tell her it will be all right. He knows he can't, because it probably won't be all right and he can't let the first words he says to her be "I'm sorry."

She shrinks to nearly nothing in months. He watches and feels guilty every night as he has his fill of stale bread and stares out the window at the garbage. He sits beside her in one class and her stomach grumbles so loud he can hear it, but she doesn't flinch. He marvels at her strength and her resolve. He wants to do something about it. Everything seems too little. She doesn't deserve to starve.

(When he decorates the cakes, he always thinks of her, and that day the cakes look much sadder, because so does she.)

He notices her before his mother does, and stands on the staircase, hidden but able to see, as she rummages through the trash. He needs to do something about it, but he is still making up his mind when his mother goes out to yell at her. _It's like she doesn't even know._(Know what? Know what it is like to starve, perhaps. Or know what it like to watch the life leave the eyes of someone you love - if love is the right word at age eleven.) He wishes his father were home. His father would do something about this.

When she comes inside and yells at him to watch the bread, he has the idea. The bravest thing he has ever done is let the bread fall down into the flames and burn. Her slap hurts, her words burn, but the wrath of his mother doesn't phase him because he has something he needs to do. He must be lucky, he decides, when his mother lets him be the one to toss the burnt loaves to the pig.

Outside, he catches her eye. He sees her fear and her starvation. Whatever punishment awaits him doesn't matter; he would give her everything. Everything, today, was just a loaf of burnt bread. Her face is all disbelief as she goes to retrieve it, but a hint of a smile, a bit of gratefulness, enough that he stands unfeeling as he receives his punishment later.

She is the girl with a voice that makes the mockingjays go silent. He is just a boy with some bread.

Years pass, and she becomes the girl with the bow and arrow, the girl who teaches him what it means to eat fresh food. He marvels at her skill, but only from afar. Sometimes he wants to thank her, but it's illegal to hunt; he begins to understand why she never thanked him, all those years ago, for the loaf of bread.

She was never supposed to be on that stage. He isn't surprised as she runs up, pushes her little sister behind her, but she isn't supposed to be there. Eleven years, and he never said a word to her. Apparently, he is out of opportunities, too. She is amazing, certainly, but District Twelve never stands a chance. He looks down and tries not to cry. His mind is still caught up in losing her when his own name jars him out of his thoughts.

It wasn't supposed to get any worse. Yes, he will talk to her after all. But they go to the Capitol and then what? He could confess his love. But they would both be dead within a month.

That was that. They would both be dead. He wants to say something as Effie asks them to shake hands. He thinks she wants to say something too, but what it would be, he can't imagine. He turns away because he can't stop thinking about the dead, dead eyes of the starving little girl she was five years ago.

She has a fire beyond even what he had imagined and his strategy from the Games is clear from the beginning: do anything he can to help her win. He knows his mother is right. District Twelve might have a winner after all. He can't afford for it to be him.

(They both live anyway. He sort of wishes they hadn't.)

More than two years of an absolute nightmare. Real or not real? (Real, she whispers. Very, very real.) He's not the same anymore and he doesn't trust her, and she never really trusted him anyway, but they try. She lost everyone but him. He knows this. He tries to hang on to her, too. It is years before they are comfortable in the same room together, years before their make-believe wedding becomes a real one, years before he can convince her to have children. (The Hunger Games are over forever. Real or not real? She doesn't answer.)

Happiness isn't bestowed upon them in a fairy-tale-like way. They work at it every single day and sometimes they fail. (Sometimes you aren't sure if you really love me. Real or not real? She looks down and cries.)

But happiness comes anyway, seeping through window panes and in the smiles of their oblivious children. Happiness comes and ages them, and their wrinkles aren't quite as deep as they could have been and still they feel old, but they never as old as they felt in the years after the Games.

They become grandparents and he becomes ill. A slow reaction to a poison from the metal in his leg. There are no healers around who can fix it, and he doesn't mind. A grandson sits on his lap - carefully on the good leg - and with graying hair he tells stories of happy times, of decorating cakes and raising children.

That night he lies in bed, his wife beside him, and she seems to really love him. He breathes slower, but keeps smiling.

(The last time he hears her sing, it's the happy song of an old woman, and he opens his eyes in a meadow with colors so bright he realizes he's living for the first time. He walks to the easel that's already there - waiting for him - and begins to paint.)


End file.
